NICOLL, John III, of Malmesbury, Wilts.

The son of a woolmonger, Nicoll also followed that trade early in his career although the practice of the law, through which he earned the sobriquet of ‘gentleman’, CFR, xviii. 86; xix. 157; KB27/769, fines rot. 1. became his primary occupation. He is not always easy to distinguish from his father who was still alive in the early 1430s, or from the John Nicholas* who sat for Malmesbury in the Parliament of 1450. It is even possible that ‘Nicholas’ was simply a variant of ‘Nicoll’ and that the subject of this biography and the MP of 1450 were one and the same man. An entry in the plea roll of the court of King’s bench for Hilary term 1432 exemplifies the problems of identification. This records that two men from Malmesbury named ‘John Nicols’, one of whom was identified as ‘senior’, were summoned to appear at Westminster that term to answer a suit for trespass. Possibly the elder John was John Nicoll II and his namesake his son, but this is uncertain, since the plea roll also refers to the former as ‘husbandman’ rather than ‘woolmonger’ and to the latter as a ‘servant’. KB27/683, rot. 42.

In the same term, John Nicoll, probably John II, appointed the lawyer John West* as his attorney in King’s bench. By 1433, however, West and the Wiltshire esquire Edmund Dauntsey were suing the subject of this biography (referred to as ‘of Malmesbury, junior, woolmonger’) in the court of common pleas over a debt of £40. At some stage after his father’s death but no later than 1456, the younger John Nicoll again quarrelled with West, against whom he brought a bill in the Chancery for refusing to release a tenement in Malmesbury that he had held in trust for John II. In 1445, however, Nicoll and West were associated with each other as co-plaintiffs in a dispute with Henry Dyer of Malmesbury, and when Nicoll was elected to his first known Parliament in 1447, West’s son Robert* was one of those who stood surety for him. KB27/683, att. rot.; CP40/688, rot. 204; 739, rot. 437; C1/16/459; C219/15/4.

By the mid 1440s Nicoll had, like West, become an attorney at Westminster, representing clients in cases emanating from Wiltshire in both the common pleas and King’s bench until at least 1456. KB27/735, att. rot. 2d; 739, att. rot. 1d; 762, rot. 72d; 777, att. rot. 2d; CP40/739, att. rot. 2; 741, att. rot. 1; 755, att. rot. 8; 779, rot. 374; 781, rot. 406, att. rot. 3d. Occasionally he himself was a party to suits in the same courts. During the late 1440s and early 1450s, for example, he and other burgesses of Malmesbury quarrelled with the abbot of Malmesbury over certain holdings in the town. In the autumn of 1459 the matter was the subject of an assize of novel disseisin (at which Nicoll asserted his right to a messuage and lands that had once belonged to his forebear, Simon Bensire) but it was afterwards referred to King’s bench. CP40/739, rot. 437; 753, rots. 154, 477; KB27/756, att. rot. 1; 760, rots. 56, 56d, 57; 761, rots. 59, 59d, 60, 60d. As an attorney at Westminster, Nicoll was perhaps busiest in that court where he also acted as a receiver of writs and warrants for John Nanfan*, then sheriff of Wiltshire, in 1451-2. He performed the same role for one of Nanfan’s successors as sheriff, John Willoughby†, in 1454. KB27/762, rot. att. 2; 773, rot. 19d; 774, rot. 72d. It is assumed that the John Nicoll who received writs on behalf of the sheriff of Som. and Dorset in the late 1430s and first half of the 1440s was a different man: CP40/715, rot. 304d; 728, rots. 108d, 109, 310d; 729, rots. 107, 128d, 328d; 731, rots. 105d, 116d, 117, 306d, 328d, 410d; 732, rot. 323d; 733, rots. 101d, 105d, 120d, 282d, 285, 316, 343d; 734, rots. 123, 410, 428d, 466d.

Apart from Nanfan, one of the most prominent esquires of south-west England, Nicoll was linked with another important figure, (Sir) John Fortescue*, c.j.KB. Associated with the chief justice by the later 1440s, he and Fortescue’s clerk, John Gough*, stood surety at the Exchequer for the chief justice in February 1448 when the Crown granted Sir John the keeping of estates in Devon during the minority of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter. Just a few months later, these properties were reassigned to the custody of Nicoll and Thomas Povy, evidently acting for Fortescue since the sureties for this new arrangement were none other than Sir John and Gough. During the second half of the 1450s Nicoll was a surety and feoffee for Fortescue in other transactions relating to lands that the chief justice acquired in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Hertfordshire. Nicoll also joined Fortescue on his official duties, accompanying him as an associate justice of assize on the home circuit in 1455 and 1460. E403/749, m. 8; CFR, xviii. 86, 88-89; xix. 157; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 172, 192, 308-9; CIMisc. vii. 384; KB27/770, rot. 71; 774, rots. 67d, 79d; 790, rot. 23d.

The role of Fortescue’s assistant suggests that Nicoll was not lacking in professional ability, a quality no doubt appreciated by the burgesses of Malmesbury when they returned him to the Commons. Furthermore, although a lawyer often absent from the town, he was still very much one of their own. While the complete loss of municipal records makes it impossible to gauge the extent of his involvement in borough administration, he did exercise the important position of alderman of the guild merchant late in his career. He is identified as such in a plea roll entry of 1459, the record of a suit for debt that he and Walter Everard* had initiated against Richard Hasard* at Westminster. CP40/794, rot. 164. Coincidentally or not, the final two of Nicoll’s four known Parliaments were summoned during periods of political ascendancy for the Lancastrian government and Court to which Fortescue was so closely bound. Nothing is known about Nicoll following the dissolution of the last of these assemblies in late 1459. Perhaps he died soon afterwards; or is it possible that in the dying days of Henry VI’s reign he rode with his patron to join the queen and the Lancastrian army in the north of England, and that subsequently he accompanied the chief justice into exile?